August 05, 2013

Her Unspeakable Woes

All I really wanted was a venti, white chocolate mocha without the whip cream.

No, don’t worry, it isn’t that. Ms Fernandez Rojas does get her beverage. The horror comes before that.

I gave the barista, a lovely older woman, my name and she shot me the typical confused look.

It begins.

I spelled it for her like a first-grader would recite her home phone number. “I-c-e-s-s. You know, like the goddess, but spelled like ice,” I explained. “What?” she asked again.

Yes, our latest Declarer of Ostentatious Grievance was trying to order a personalised coffee – or rather, coffee in a disposable cup that has her name scrawled on it before being thrown away - a baffling concept in itself, one made more complicated by the author’s uncommon and phonetically unobvious name. And the confused barista, despite being a lovely older woman, was, albeit unwittingly, grinding our Guardianista’s face beneath her heel.

In fairness to Starbucks, it’s not just baristas who are at fault but any restaurant or eatery requiring a name to add a personal touch to its service.

You see, Ms Fernandez Rojas has endured this poignant political struggle before - “a lifetime of having my name misspelled and mispronounced.” And those tears won’t dry themselves, you know. Which is why you, the public, must be told. What with your dull and obvious names, like Jessica and Angela:

Angela could get coffee at Starbucks with ease while Icess was still spelling her name out. Jessica was a staple at my local Chinese place even though Icess paid. And even Microsoft Word recognised Jenny as a proper pronoun, a proper person, over me; the red squiggle line was a constant reminder.

Spellcheck too? Will this oppression never end? One for our collection of classic sentences. And doubtless Ms Fernandez Rojas is intimately familiar with the spelling and pronunciation of every name of every employee at her local Chinese restaurant.

Sometimes the endless quest for name validation, even in my own Word document, was exhausting.

Poor lamb. Perhaps a coffee would help. Oh wait.

It’s
all very tragic. Our Guardian
columnist just wants to “celebrate [her] uniqueness” in an “inclusive society”
and her spellchecking software, the subtleties of which apparently elude her, is
dashing those hopes. She isn’t being “validated” by Microsoft Word. It’s how utopias die. No, you black-hearted scoundrels, stop that smirking
at once. Why won’t you feel her pain? Doesn’t its immensity weigh upon your
breast? Well, at least Ms Fernandez Rojas isn’t suffering alone.

Update:

Sniggering at the spelling errors of
Starbucks baristas is now a thing among Guardian
readers, who seem to imagine a ten-second interaction with someone whose own
name they don’t know, and don’t care to know, is equivalent to a relationship with a long-standing colleague or close family
member. (Next week in the Guardian:
laughing at dyslexics and people for whom English is a second language.) Though
I did quite like this dissenting comment: “This is a bit of a pot-and-kettle situation. A few
weeks ago this newspaper ran, on its front page, the headline marquee ‘Plane
carrying Bolivian president, Eva Morales, rerouted to Austria.’ There was no
mention of when Bolivian president Evo
Morales had announced a sex change.”

Mr Moran is just back from his hols and he's deploring… something or other. I'm not quite sure what as he doesn't really make it clear. But he did visit Osborne House on the Isle of Wight, and that gets him thinking. So how about this for a classic sentence?

'But as we commoners solemnly shuffled past the velvet rope that separates riff-raff from things the royal behind might once have rested on, I caught my wife's eye. A thought flashed between us: "Why are we woolly liberals worshipping relics of a woman who benefited from the oppression of around half the people on Earth?"'

I thought that Microsoft Word allowed you to add words to its dictionary. If so, then she could quite easily avoid the perpetual anguish of seeing her name defaced by the red squiggly line. Am I wrong about this?

Since she can barely write English, it may be a fairly safe assumption that her verbal skills aren't brilliant. I pity the poor barista dealing with her mangled pronunciation and allusions to ancient mythology. As an aside my son's name, Ruairi, usually needs spelling out to English people, never mind Hispanics. Get over it.

I've gone through my life having to spell my name for people, and I've found that it helps to have a clear, concise explanation. It is unhelpful, in other words, to assume that ageing Starbucks employees will be acquainted with Egyptian Gods and old CBS programmes. Especially when you've muddled up your references. The Secrets of Isis wasn't a cartoon.

I agree that it's polite to ask after to spelling and pronunciation of unfamiliar names, though. There's a certain type of person who assumes they're brilliant at judging them. They never are.

Hell, given all the weird variations people can come up with for names like "Mary" and "Will" it makes sense to ask for the spelling every time.

I have a weird last name, so my wife and I picked fairly ordinary first names for our children. But that, ironically, makes them both unique among their friends -- especially my daughter. About half of my son's pals have names like Jack or Thomas (the other half are mostly cod-Celtic or cod-African). But ALL of my daughter's friends have unspellable agglomerations.

I've got a family name of German origin that's simple for German speakers, but difficult for English speakers. It's no big deal to have to tell people the correct pronunciation of my family name.

And then there was the semester I spent studying in Russia. Cyrillic has the letters to transliterate my last name the way it's pronounced in English, giving Russian speakers no problem! Huzzah! That is, until everybody put the stress on the wrong syllable. And don't ask them to pronounce "Theodore", since Russian doesn't have the "th" sound. :-)

Heh. My mother has an unusual first name from the American South. At some point in the distant past, she just started usung her middle name. She didn't bitch about the unfairness that Yankees had never heard the name before. I need to have her write an op-Ed to complete her life. Finally, liberation at age 85!

"If we truly want to become an inclusive society, if we want to celebrate our uniqueness, it begins with a name."

So if your name is unique - and God knows it isn't just being part of an increasingly splintered, sorry, multicultural society that's leading to an explosion in names in which there's no longer an expected familiarity in spelling - then everyone ought to make a real effort to learn how to spell and pronounce your unique name, with its unique spelling. Really, is the author just padding a throwaway comment - "people sometimes spell / say my name wrong" - to make an article, or do they really have that chip on their shoulder?

Really, is the author just padding a throwaway comment – “people sometimes spell / say my name wrong” - to make an article, or do they really have that chip on their shoulder?

It’s quite hard to care one way or the other. But I suppose the outpouring above counts as a display of identity politics, a subject that does tend to attract narcissists and then makes them even less aware of their own absurdities.

Horace,

And I assume that when she says “proper pronoun”, she means “proper noun”.

According to her blog and tweets, Ms Fernandez Rojas is a creative writing graduate with “an alphabet soup full of degrees,” and now teaches others how to be “amazing writers.” She’s also “Latina – but not in the typical way you might think.”

I thought that they write your name on the cup so that they can keep the orders straight. It is amazing how low some people set their insulted/disrespected/offended triggers. Maybe they can't figure out any other way to attract attention.

To add a word to your local dictionary, right-click the underlined word and select Add to Dictionary.

To enable or disable this feature, click the Word icon in the upper-left corner (we tech writers LOVE it when Microsoft makes their interface features SO abstract that they have no name), and then select Options.

In the left pane, select Proofing and go to the When correcting spelling and grammar in Word section. Clear the Check spelling as you type check box, and then click OK.

So basically she's complaining that not everyone is familiar with every name that has ever existed, or could conceivably exist. Oh, the humanity.

People mispronounce my (Jewish) surname all the time. (To be fair, the alternate pronunciation is also fairly common, as are several alternate spellings.) It's never occurred to me to get upset about it, but then I'm not a Guardian columnist.

Oh, I guess I have been being oppressed all these years living in Foreign where people have difficulty with the name "Mike". I've had "Maik", and all manner of ungodly variations. And my surname has occasionally grown an umlaut, thereby denying me my birthright of Anglo culture and heritage.

The scales have fallen from my eyes. I am now a "victim" and in consequence more righteous than the rest of you unoppressed who need to CYP post haste.

This is really just a form of peacocking: a flamboyant display meant to showcase right-on credentials to the like-minded. It's worth noting that in non-traditional Latina Icess Fernandez Rojas's native tongue, a peacock is 'un pavo real' or Royal Turkey.

No, you mustn’t mock. Ms Fernandez Rojas just wants to “celebrate her uniqueness” by seeking “validation” from a spellcheck programme. And by inflating the trivial to sociological proportions. And by sounding like every other arrogant and whiny Guardian columnist.

Wait a minute...I thought it was spelled Isis. From The Secrets of Isis, and according to wiki: Isis can command the elements of earth, air, fire and water and can control the weather. . So why can't she make her own damn coffee?

Not even a First World Problem, but a "Progressive Grievance", an issue whose relevance or importance is so microscopic that only Guardian readers can see it.

Also, simple solution when they ask for your name, do what I do, say politely "you don't need to know my name, thank you" and hey presto, you still get coffee. However, you won't get 800 words of pure victim hood out of that.

Our Guardian columnist just wants to “celebrate [her] uniqueness” in an “inclusive society” and her spellchecking software, the subtleties of which apparently elude her, is dashing those hopes. She isn’t being “validated” by Microsoft Word. It’s how utopias die.

Well, we live in strange times and Ms Icess Fernandez Rojas is far from alone in her lack of moral proportion. For many young people, especially those who’ve been exposed to the arse-end of academia for longer than is wise, whininess is now regarded as a virtue. It’s how some people hope to make themselves interesting, if only to other idiots. Apparently stoicism is terribly old hat. Whingeing is what the sexy and enlightened people are doing now. And so by some accounts, nothing is too small or banal to be unjust or oppressive, or emotionally crushing, from hairstyles that are racist to the traumatic names of nail polish colours. Apparently these things are “microaggressions” that are “extremely triggering” and making the intellectuals of tomorrow weep into their pillows.

Rob reminds me of a trick my father used to use. He figured that whenever you went to an Italian restaurant, you give an Italian name, you might get seated sooner. German restaurant, German name, etc. etc. Seems the goddess Icessss could use her imagination a little. She's supposed to be of the creative bent, after all.

All she needs to say when asked is that her name is spelt like "ice", as in frozen water, with a double "s" on the end. It doesn't strike me as that hard. Although that wouldn't allow her the opportunity to link herself to a goddess, which I imagine she finds important.

As with Private Eye's recent "Woman has Baby" cover, most CiF articles can quickly be reduced to their real meaning: "Woman with unusual name has mild trouble ordering ludicrously specific coffee, whinges".

She coins the fabulous phrase, "bolus of feminism", and says the following:

"Scan stories for minor details relating to gender, then highlight them, and make grandiose statements about the perpetuation of oppression. When the evidence is flimsy, lubricate the bolus with the notion of the subtlety of the oppression. It might be swallowable."

Replace "stories" with "your own life experiences", and "gender" with whatever the flavor of the month is, and we have the template for all unfalsifiable grievance-based Leftist fake reasoning.

Apparently, sniggering at the spelling errors of Starbucks baristas is now a thing among Guardian readers, who seem to imagine a ten-second interaction with someone whose own name they don’t know, and don’t care to know, is equivalent to a relationship with a dear friend or close family member. Next week in the Guardian: laughing at dyslexics and people for whom English is a second language…

Though I did quite like this dissenting comment: “This is a bit of a pot-and-kettle situation. A few weeks ago this newspaper ran, on its front page, the headline marquee ‘Plane carrying Bolivian president, Eva Morales, rerouted to Austria.’ There was no mention of when Bolivian president Evo Morales had announced a sex change.”

Apparently these things are “microaggressions” that are “extremely triggering” and making the intellectuals of tomorrow weep into their pillows.

Yes, this is the logical consequence of the whole concept of 'microagressions'. The term originally ment 'small instances of prejudice which minorities deal with on a daily basis', but it's inevitably come to mean 'small, trivial irritations which pretty much everyone deals with on a daily basis, but only minorities get to whinge about'. And so whining about trivialities becomes acceptable, and you get people demanding 'trigger warnings' for anything that might possibly offend or annoy them in some way. Ironically, they'll often cry 'first world problems' whenever someone else complains about things they don't consider important.

As a solution she should manufacture a disposable cup with a microphone and speaker so she can say her own name and have it repeated back without the oppression of spelling intervening.
It should only double the cost...

Quite. But I fear the project was always destined for inadvertent comedy. I mean, the author of the article is a creative writing graduate – one with “an alphabet soup full of degrees” - who now teaches others how to be “amazing writers.” And this colossal talent, this punctilious corrector of error, is exasperated by the red squiggly lines that appear beneath her name as she types it. In fact, not only is she exasperated, it offends her politically. It makes her feel excluded, exhausted and invalid. And yet, despite this deep emotional trauma - one that’s presumably repeated day after day - she still hasn’t figured out how to get rid of those red squiggly lines.